Okay so I am trying to hold it together despite being eternally frustrated with, idek, just fucking everything this morning.
Here is a list of this I accomplished this morning (this will help me feel good)
There are things I need to get done today, some more pressing than others. I REALLY REALLY need to get this reflection paper finished by 5 pm today. This shouldn't be too difficult because I don't actually have any work I need to do until 11 am CST, and it's only 8:31 am right now. Loads of time. I just need to stop getting distracted by things like "Is the PS5 still sold out everywhere?"
I'm keeping up with my paper planner, though it is not always easy. I forget that I have meetings scheduled on like 4 different platforms, and sometimes I put them in todoist, and sometimes I write them down, and sometimes I just forget completely. So I'm working on rectifying that.
I got the two songs requiring vocals recorded for the single we plan to put out in January. The third song is a tiny instrumental, so it didn't need vocals. We need to do final mixes and then figure out artwork, but othwerwise it is in the bank. I'm gonna try to find time to work on keyboards and an accompaniment for 1/2 of the single that is going to come after that one sometime tomorrow probably? I got that part done on the 2nd song earlier last week, so my work on that second single is 1/4 done which is nice. Oh and we bought a second keyboard and got OneDrive up and running (I don't really need to hear about SAaS or how "You can just set up a nextcloud" when I spent literally whole work days trying to suss out why I can't add a fucking domain to the nextcloud that I DID successfully set up on an old laptop, oh and also if my house burns down my in-home cloud doesn't actually save me from anything so *ETERNAL SHRUG*, and bought an external harddrive JUST IN CASE MICROSOFT IMPLODES, and now aside from a couple of weird licensing issues with plugins (read: some companies are absolute shit when it comes to purchasing digital music plugins and it fucking sucks but it's a workable problem so fuck it), so now I can work on music in my office AND spouse can work on music in our studio room. That is really nice. I'm kind of a coward and I don't like recording vocals around where ANYONE can hear me and now I have a room of solitude and wheeeee. Plus working at home means I can record pretty much whenever I want to as long as my work gets done (of which I have none cos I'm just a lowly trainee right now) and when I'm not in meetings (or working on endless doctorate work in those same interim hours).
I'm feeling less frustrated now, so I guess writing out this really was therapeutic. Yay.
Please:
Be kind to yourself.
Fuck the police.
Please be safe.
Keep social distancing.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Stay safe.
Whoops a whole week went by. Weird.
Training is going fine. It's weird. I feel like I'm doing nothing and getting paid a lot to do it. I need to remember what is actually happening is that I am going from an abusive workplace that expected more from me than was remotely reasonable, to a workplace that places the employee first. It's a helluva transition.
I did all my house chores this morning, and not just my morning chores. I know it sounds juvenile, but making a chore list really does help me to keep my living space clean and nice. You do what you can with what works for you. And this works for me. I also rebuilt my fitness journal. It is one that I keep pencil/paper because physically marking progress means A LOT to me. I have actually transitioned a lot of my stuff into my paper/pencil planner as well. I still have todoist, because I need to have things like appointments on hand on my phone to ping just in case I forget, but I am moving more and more to my IRL planners and journals so that I can make use of writing things down as a key piece of remembering to do a thing.
After today my work week is comprised of "self study" which feels like stealing but whatever. I have a ton of stuff I need to do and take care of so it's not like I won't have stuff I need to get done.
Anyway I have a meeting at 11 am, and I wanted to get more work stuff done before then, so I'm switching over to my ~work machine~ from my personal machine.
Please:
Be kind to yourself.
Fuck the police.
Please be safe.
Keep social distancing.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Stay safe.
Training is god damn exhausting. As is sitting all day. I'm grateful to be starting tho! I enjoyed the week in-between that I gave myself, but it's nice to just finally get into things. Plus now I feel like I can finally look ahead to my first paycheck, since I'm OFFICIALLY DOING THE WORK now.
Spouse and I are watching the Eli Roth AMC series History of Horror . I like how each episode is broken down by different genres/tropes and it's really interesting. I still think his films are... They're just not my cup of tea. But I am learning a lot and I thought I knew a lot and whew was I wrong. 13/10, would recommend, but if you're squeamish you may want to skip it because they show loads of stuff from all of the films they are discussing. I'll be more thorough when we finish season 2 over on the consume side of this here website.
I bought a couple of books over the weekend in anticipation of (hopefully) new lockdowns. I say hopefully because I'm in Nebraska and our governor is just flat out refusing to do anything other than let us all fucking die. It's NOT GREAT.
Anyway, I picked up The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford and The Redemption of Time by Baoshu . I am SO EXCITED for both of these! This also reminds me that I should post write ups about the books I did read back at the beginning of the pandemic, when reading was one of the ways I managed to compartmentalize and cope with all of the awful information.
I'm going through my planner and setting it up to be in "schedule" mode as opposed to treating it like a to-do list. I used to really hate the idea of chunking out time, BUT I GET IT NOW. Turns out that I'm a schedule person. I really need to get this home NextCloud up and running so that I can duplicate it into an online but I also don't know if I really need to put more stuff online at all. I am constantly stressing about how I want to divide my time and organization and I really just feel like, especially now that I work for a Non-Evil Tech Company that I should be moving offline as much as possible in every other arena.
This was a chonk of an update, so I'm going to leave it here. Talk to you all soon.
Please:
Be kind to yourself.
Fuck the police.
Please be safe.
Keep social distancing.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Stay safe.
Hooooooooo goodness am I in a terrible mood. I guess being asked to wait over a week to find out if I have cancer will do that. WEIRD.
Onboarding at a private company is weird. Everything is weird.
I name-dropped our band on the very first day of training so we'll see if anyone cares.
I'm tryong so hard to not be irked about every little thing. Like how I sent an email on Friday and have not received follow up at all even though it's 11 am on Monday in their timezone. WHATEVER IT'S FINE I JUST HAVE A CANCER APPOINTMENT I DON'T NEED ANSWERS NOW OR ANYTHING.
I took a nap for an hour during our second break time. It was wonderful. If I could wedge in a nap every day I'd be in amazing mental health shape.
I am looking into getting into either a digital or physical scheduler. Like, I have my happy planner. Maybe I'll just work on converting it so that I can look at my day in chunks of time. I've been doing a lot of reading and I think that part of my problem is that I suck with to-do lists. I should probably figure this out before my todoist subscription renews. I won't be sad to save $35.
Whoops keep forgetting I haven't finished this update. The day got better. Or I got calmer. Idk, but probably the latter. I just really don't do well with not knowing things. It's a problem.
Anyway, I'm off to trade in my car for a newer one.
Please:
Be kind to yourself.
Fuck the police.
Please be safe.
Keep social distancing.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Stay safe.
Well well well a lot has happened in the past 11 days.
New season of The Mandalorian is going well.
I'm still waiting on my car to be ready to pick up.
Joe Biden (who let me remind y'all I think is boring and at best not-terrible, but LOADS better than the orange menace) won the election. Handily.
I am at the tail end of my interim week between Old Job and New Job.
I turned 40.
I had my first mammogram.
I had my second mammogram.
I get to have an "is it cancer?" biopsy next week.
This year can stop any time now.
Please:
Be kind to yourself.
Fuck the police.
Please be safe.
Keep social distancing.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Stay safe.
Ugh. Election Eve. I'm nauseous.
Today is also the 3rd to last day of work for me. We have training days Tuesday and Wednesday and, lol, fuck that. So today, Thursday, and then I wrap up on Friday, which is also my birthday.
Speaking of birthdays, I'm turning 40. I'm not feeling any kind of way about it other than that I need to get a mammogram cos my family is prone to cancerrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I talk to so many people who are like "ugh mammograms are awful" and like I just don't get it? Not that I think it will be fun or comfortable, but like I don't want to die and this is part of upkeep and maintenance and so like just do it. I have zero fear around being proactive about my health. Why would I? Anyway, my mammo is officially scheduled for ass o'clock on Monday. Smash 'em real good. Let me know I'm cancer free.
Woof I have got to stop listening to political podcasts. I am on tenterhooks and it's just not good for my brain meats. But I feel like the only way I can cope is if I keep tabs on what is going on.
I coughed for like 15 minutes yesterday and I'm coughing again today and it's probably just allergies, and my temp is fine and I can taste food fine, but I'm just so paranoid that after months of being trapped working with people face to face and FINALLY finding an out that I'll fucking get covid in some weird karmic twist and I hate it.
I'm shopping around for different scheduling software. I think part of my problem is I have to-do lists but I don't like to-do lists. I DO like blocking out chunks of time to do things, so I think I am going to try that route to see if I can be more successful with time management.
If you haven't yet voted (if you are a USian, or anywhere where there is an election taking place) please make a plan and make it happen. We need you.
Please:
Be kind to yourself.
Fuck the police.
Please be safe.
Keep social distancing.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Stay safe.